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Disciples III: Renaissance

Score: 6.0 / 10

For a long time, the
king of the fantasy themed turn-based strategy genre was the Heroes of Might & Magic
series. It lorded over the hard drives of gamers as a benevolent
despot, handing out joy to the masses in return for the slavish

obedience of "just one
more turn." In contrast, the Disciples
series was a would-be usurper, really good looking but brutal to those
who chose to ally themselves with it. Still, there was something
appealing about the first two games in the series. There was a strong
visual style and a compelling fantasy setting that held a slightly
darker tinge to it than the bright colors of

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the Heroes series. It was
brutal on the players, but if you could survive, you'd be mighty. The
latest entry in the series, Disciples III:
Renaissance, attempts to put a velvet
glove in place of the iron fist, and the grip is predictably weaker.

It's very hard to fault
the visuals in the game because they look excellent. Character models
are rendered in lush detail and move very fluidly, while maintaining a
slightly baroque feel that suggests the previous entries in the series.
The various maps are equally detailed and it's rather enjoyable to watch
the landscape change as you secure control points on maps, influence
physically covering the land in your chosen faction's artwork. Your
home town in each scenario starts off bereft of the important structures
that allow you to hire and upgrade troops, but with each purchase, it
looks more and more magnificent, and the structural upgrades feel
organic enough that you can tell at a glance what troops can come out of
the structure. If I have any complaint about the visuals, it's the
feeling that the developers went too far, that they lost the dark fairy
tale style which has been a hallmark of the series. The mostly black
and white sketches that serve as cutscenes and introduction screens for
scenarios not only feel far rougher than the actual game models, but
rougher and substandard when compared to the rich watercolor style from
the previous two games.

While Disciples III has
little to worry about in the visuals, the sounds of the game are quite
another story. The music is supposed to be very sweeping with a touch
of lament to it, but it proves utterly annoying after about the second
or third scenario in, whether it's the vocalist on the exploration map
or the uninspiring themes in combat. The unit acknowledgments are clear
and easy to understand, but they prove repetitive to the point of
obnoxiousness. In-game cutscenes suffer from actors who deliver badly
written lines in earnest attempts to rise above the material. The
writing never rises to the level of "so bad, it's good!" prose and you
feel a touch sorry for the actors who enunciate and speak wonderfully
with utter garbage on their scripts. One exception is the narrator who
does the voice over for the major cinematics and the synopsis of events
between scenarios. While his voice is clear, his delivery is so
thoroughly godawful and emotionally tone deaf that you wish he'd stop
talking.

The gameplay in Disciples III has
gotten easier from the first two games, perhaps overly so. One definite
improvement in my opinion is the move to a genuine tactical battle map
rather than the more abstracted method previously employed. There is
the option for auto-battle, for those folks who don't have any talent or
desire to get into small unit tactics, or quick battle for people who
can't stand to watch the computer trundle through stupid moves in real
time.

This leads me to my
first big complaint about the gameplay, specifically the AI. In
previous Disciples
games, even the Easy level AI would kick your ass and bang your
girlfriend before coming back to finish you off if you made a mistake.
Here, the AI seems to have trouble remembering that there's an enemy
force out there which is intent on destroying it.

Part of the strategic
element in the game is capturing control nodes and basically putting a
flag on them, said flag evolving into a magical auto-turret for lack of
a better phrase. This was handled by a special hero unit known as a Rod
Bearer in the first two games, but this ability has now been passed to
all heroes. The AI is at least smart enough to try and launch an attack
on those control points right before they upgrade to a stronger version,
but if it happens to get slowed up or you decide to stand guard until
the flag upgrades itself, then it's beating it's head against the wall,
and feeding XP into the very thing it's trying to destroy.

The pacing of the game
can't seem to decide if it wants to be a fast paced tactical affair
where your lone hero rides forth and mows down enemies or a slower
strategic endeavor where towns are properly guarded by garrisons and
battles are bitterly fought between carefully arrayed heroic armies. As
it is, the AI only ever seems to have one hero it spends any time
building up, so zapping that hero early on practically guarantees you
victory. The map design tends towards maze-like affairs that
effectively funnel you towards your objectives or the enemy armies into
you. It also makes it effectively impossible to do anything but run
head first into the obstacles ahead of you. Good strategy games find
ways to make you balance out forces and resources, accepting temporary
losses for longer term gains. Here, that balance does not exist.

The hero units are more
customizable from the first two games, featuring a stat system and a
skill map that looks a lot like it came out of Final Fantasy XII, but
not all hero units are created equal. Each campaign has a main
character hero who pretty much ends up being your only hero, given the
AI and map design impediments. While heroes can notionally buy upgraded
armor and weapons, the Big Hero units have to wander around the map and
kill monsters guarding chests for their upgrades. In previous games,
heroes had limited inventory slots. Here, the heroes have unlimited
inventory slots. The problem is that even over the course of a single
scenario, a hero can end up holding a lot of loot. A good inventory
management system would have been helpful. As it is, players have to
slowly scroll from column to column of gear when not in combat. Since
new items go to the back of the line, you end up scrolling a lot. It
gets even more irksome when you go to a vendor to sell off loot and it
doesn't show up unless you go to a totally different vendor.

The game presents only
three campaigns, featuring the Empire, the Legions of the Damned, and
the Elven Alliance. Dwarves and Undead, which used to be playable races
right off the bat, are reduced to mobs on the map. There's word that
the Undead Hordes will be making a return as a playable race in an
expansion, but even so, it'd better be an expansion right up there with
the expansions for Diablo II
or Morrowind.
For each campaign, we get a Big Hero and the same whiny sidekick
throughout all three. Each of the Big Heroes is a good and dutiful
servant of their race, and I want to slap them for being foisted on me.
Part of the fun of these games is the metagaming one does with it.
Previously, you could build up a hero of your choosing, then use that
hero for multiplayer games. There was a story to them, how Bob the
Ranger lost most of his men taking the enemy capital while Doug the
Warrior pounded it flat with no losses. Here, we're stuck slogging
through a dull storyline with characters we don't give a damn about.
We'd make them lose, but then the campaign ends prematurely, which
really kills the fun.

Like a son who's only a
pale imitation of the man that his father was, Disciples III replaces
the iron handed but engaging gameplay of it's forebears with lots of
frills and fripperies but a tragic lack of understanding about what made
those earlier editions great. While the character advancement scheme
and tactical battle maps are improvements worth keeping, they feel
almost wasted on unworthy antagonists in the service of a wretched
storyline.